With the advent of microprocessor computers, the use of electronic data and communication systems has proliferated, especially in the business sector. For instance, in the foreign exchange and money market dealing field, it is common to provide trading rooms with a plurality of work stations, each station typically including a variety of data and communication equipment such as a computer keyboard, computer display screens in the form of cathode ray tubes, a telephone turret with a specified number of direct lines and telephone line monitoring units and other peripheral devices. In order to make maximum use of the available floor space in the trading room, the work stations are oftentimes ganged together to form a cluster of work stations. Such clusters can be formed by arranging several double work stations (i.e., two work stations arranged in back-to-back fashion) side-by-side, the resulting cluster comprising two rows of back-to-back work stations.
Computer work stations have been developed in the past (see, for instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. Des. 251,666, Des. 275,284, 4,316,082, 4,345,803 and 4,449,762). While some of these work stations have a modular construction (see, for instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,313,112 and 4,458,961) and others are adapted to be ganged together (see, for instance, U.S. Pat. No. Des. 251,592), they are not specifically designed to be arranged in back-to-back or side-by-side fashion. Thus, these work stations are not especially suitable for the formation of clusters which comprise two rows of work stations arranged back-to-back. As a result, such clusters have, in the past, been formed by arranging conventional desks in back-to-back and side-by-side fashion (see, for instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,886,766 and 2,694,614).
One problem encountered when ganging together the conventional desks or computer work stations described above involves providing adequate room for and access to the necessary telephone, data and electrical service lines and accessory equipment. Without adequate room for and access to such service lines and accessory equipment, field installation and maintenance can be made difficult.
Although there is one known type of computer work station which as a modular construction and is adapted for clustering, each work station in the cluster has its own individual raceway which is separate and autonomous from the raceway of an adjoining work station in an adjacent row. Thus, the size of each raceway is limited. Moreover, each work station itself is an individual unit which is separate and autonomous from the other work stations in the cluster.